Metro Tunnel Finish Line Is Close. Now Comes the Hard Part.

The Metro Tunnel will open. That much is settled. What happens in the months after — how the new stations integrate with buses and trams, how fares are structured, and whether promised urban renewal actually materialises around the five new underground stops — is still being worked out, and the clock is running.

The project, now costed at $12.6 billion after a series of budget revisions, runs 9 kilometres beneath the CBD from South Kensington in the west to South Yarra in the east. The five stations — Arden, Parkville, State Library, Town Hall and Anzac — are built. The tunnels are bored. But commissioning, the grinding process of integrating new signalling with the existing Metropolitan Rail network, has absorbed more time than the government publicly acknowledged through most of 2025. Public Transport Victoria confirmed in June that the final testing regime remains ongoing, with a commercial opening now targeted for late 2026.

The Stations Are Ready. The Network Around Them Isn't.

Arden is the clearest example of the gap between infrastructure and integration. The station sits beneath Laurens Street in North Melbourne, a precinct the government has designated a major urban renewal zone with plans for 15,000 new dwellings over 20 years. Right now, a commuter emerging from Arden at street level finds a construction site, a handful of light-industrial buildings, and a bus network that has not yet been redesigned to feed the station. The Department of Transport and Planning has flagged a bus route review for the inner-north, but as of this week no final routes have been gazetted.

Parkville station, directly serving the University of Melbourne's main Grattan Street campus and the Royal Melbourne Hospital on Flemington Road, is better positioned — the pedestrian catchment is dense and immediate. But hospital shift workers and university staff have been asking for months about after-midnight services, and the government's confirmed operating hours do not yet extend to the 24-hour frequency some health unions have requested.

The Anzac station, at St Kilda Road and Domain Road in South Yarra, replaces surface-level tram stops that carried an estimated 40,000 boardings a day on the 96 and 16 routes. Tram Network Upgrade planning documents circulated to stakeholders in May 2026 indicate Yarra Trams will restructure both routes once the tunnel opens, but the detail — including whether the 16 continues north of Bourke Street — has not been publicly released.

Fares, Frequency and What the Government Has to Decide

Three decisions now sit in the government's in-tray. The first is fare zoning. The Metro Tunnel creates a genuine cross-city rail link for the first time, meaning a commuter can travel from Sunbury in Melbourne's outer west to Cranbourne in the south-east on a single through-service. Public Transport Victoria's internal modelling, referenced in a Legislative Council estimates hearing in May, suggested through-running could cut average CBD commute times by 11 minutes during peak hour. Whether that warrants a fare restructure — or whether the existing two-zone myki system absorbs the change — is a decision Treasurer Jacinta Allan's department has not finalised.

The second decision is frequency. The whole point of the tunnel was to end the City Loop bottleneck, which caps trains through the CBD at roughly 18 per hour per line during peaks. The new infrastructure can theoretically handle 24 trains per hour. Getting there requires new train drivers, new rollingstock scheduling and renegotiated enterprise agreements with the Rail, Tram and Bus Union — talks that resumed in June after stalling in April.

The third is the hardest: making Arden work. The state government owns parcels of land around the station and has development agreements with private partners, but Fishermans Bend, just 1.5 kilometres to the south-west, has already demonstrated how slowly government-led urban renewal moves when housing market conditions soften. Apartment approvals in the inner city fell 14 percent in the March 2026 quarter, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which makes the 15,000-dwelling target around Arden look ambitious on current trajectory.

The tunnel will change Melbourne. The decisions made in the next six months will determine whether it changes Melbourne well. Commuters and developers are watching the same inbox, waiting for the same answers from Spring Street.